


Good Buddies

by ahimsabitches



Category: overwatch
Genre: Alcohol, Fluff, I bet he gets really tired of them after a while, M/M, No Sex, Trans Junkrat, Trucker junkers, but that really doesn't feature in the story, ex-boyfriend angst, gay truckers, lots of mentions of it though, lots of pig puns, trucker AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:37:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8102671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches
Summary: Jamie unintentionally digs up a part of Mako's past.





	

**Author's Note:**

> In my way-more-extensive-than-I'd-expected research for this fic, I found out "Good buddy" is apparently trucker slang for "gay man". Absent any disparaging context, I thought this was cute as hell.

When Jamie approached the exit, he did precisely what Mako hoped he wouldn’t do.

“Roadie! Did that sign say what I think it said?!”

There was a lot of room in Mako’s expansive gut for apprehension to thrash like a caught fish. “I didn’t see a sign,” he grunted. The wide-lensed aviators and the black bandana covered his thunderous glower, but Mako kept his eyes on the yellow-bricked backend of the massive outlet mall speeding by his window. The driver’s seat creaked and squeaked as Jamie bounced in it.

“It said ‘Hog-wild’! There’s a bar called _Hog-Wild_! We’re stoppin’!”

Jamie giggled and wheeled the rig right with great swoops of his wiry arms. Mako huffed and pinched the bridge of his nose between the bandana and aviators. There wasn’t any use arguing with Jamie; the best Mako could hope for was a quick stop and no unruffled feathers.

But knowing Jamie, and knowing some of the regulars at the Hog-Wild BBQ & Bar, asking for that was like asking week-old roadkill to get up and do a haka.

Jamie swept the purring rig around the pockmarked off ramp and onto the service road, baked pale and potholed by years of hard use and neglect. The sun, tipping west, helixed through the stack of trees along the road and into their eyes. Mako longed to have it at his back again. Jamie stopped the rig in the middle of the car lot, skewed diagonally across two rows of spaces. Mako’s huge-fingered hand enveloped his steel forearm before he catapulted himself out.  

“ _Jamie_.”

The name was a command, and Jamie’s smile faded as he gazed at the dark lines of the Ta Moko curling up from behind bandana and aviators like obedient tongues of black flame.

He rolled his eyes and flumped back into his seat dramatically. “ _Fiiiiine_ ,” he groaned and the rig’s engine rumbled to life. At a stately amble, Jamie maneuvered the rig through the car lot to the bigger truck lot behind it, and parked his rig in a space neat as a horse in a racing chute. “Happy?” He cocked a bushy, patched eyebrow at Mako.

Mako had been hauling long enough, and Jamie’s reputation had preceded him far enough, to know what would happen if they were caught violating one of the more minor, unspoken courtesies of the road. Nothing as flagrant as an asswhooping he’d have to stop, not here, but definitely more fuel down the gossip pipeline, which would lead to more trouble in so many forms it made Mako’s mind reel. Keeping Jamie afloat– in multiple senses of the phrase– was hard enough. For both of them.  He nodded once.

Jamie vaulted out, slammed his door, dashed around the rig’s hot chrome-and-yellow nose and ripped Mako’s door open in the time it took him to unbuckle his belt and reach for the cap perched on the dash.

It was a red-and-white mesh affair with FOXY GRANDPA emblazoned in flames on the white foam front. Mako groaned and put it back.

Jamie grinned. “Aw, hey, leave it on, mate! I bought it for me but it suits ya better.”

“No,” Mako said and landed on the asphalt with a grunt.

“Well c'mon, _foxy grandpa,_ let’s go.” Jamie hooked a sinewy arm through Mako’s slablike one and began walking. He yelped in indignation when the asphalt did not move under him like it should have and he stumbled back against his partner’s flannel-coated bulk.

“Jamie. I need to say something before we go in. It’s important.” Mako pulled his aviators up and held Jamie’s golden eyes. “This place isn’t like the ones we usually go to. It’s…they _know_ me here.”

“Of _course_ they do, mate! The fuckin’ _bar_ ’s called Hog-Wild! Did they name it after ya? Bet they did. C'mon; let’s go! I wanna see how many rounds they can buy ya before ya get snockered!”

“Just promise me you won’t start anything, Jamie. I used to be… _friends_ with these guys.”

“Oi, c'mon, ol’ Hog, you know me! I won’t start nothin’ unless they try to take what ain’t theirs.” Jamie gave Mako’s crotch a healthy squeeze.

Mako sighed and reminded himself just whom exactly he’d chosen to love: an entire earth’s worth of quakes; an entire season’s stack of storms stirring and whirling in a young, spring-loaded man half his age and a third of his weight. Mako couldn’t shore up against every disaster; sometimes he could only stand in the wind and shake the jetsam off both of them when it was done.

He let himself be led under the garish orange-yellow scream of neon advising them to _Go Hog-Wild_ – Mako visibly flinched–and into the bare-bricked building. The door _bing-bonged_ cheerily, and Mako set his jaw.

The place was half-bar half-restaurant, but the only division in the entire building was the half-wall that separated the brightly-lit tile-and-chrome kitchen from the main dining area. The civilians kept to the restaurant side. The haulers mostly congregated on the right side of the room, and the division between restaurant and bar was stark: on one side, flourescents, bare grey tile, white plastic chairs bellied up to aluminum-tubed tables, the smell of grease thick enough to coat lungs in two breaths. On the bar side, the scent _du jour_ was cigarette smoke and stale beer and the light was dim and yellow but, he had to admit, much warmer and more inviting than the blank, industrial quality of the restaurant.

The restaurant side was all but abandoned; an elderly man and woman sat aimlessly picking at piles of shredded pork on styrofoam plates.

On the bar side, a full house of heads swivelled toward the sound of the door chime. Silence dropped like a cartoon piano. Mako watched faces flip from shock to grinning recognition, then the whole bar, minus a few men Mako didn’t recognize either, either rose to their feet or raised their glasses and cheered. Mako grabbed for Jamie’s hand and squeezed it gently.

Three men approached them with grins ebullient and hands full of beer.

The first, silver already starting at his temples, wore a leather jacket and tight jeans and clapped him on the back. “Well there the _fuck_ he is, Mister Motherfucking _Roadhog_! We missed the _shit_ out of you, big man!”

A younger man with cowboy boots and a shock of brown curly hair nudged a large glass of amber beer into his hand. “It’s been so long, Mako! We’ve got so much to talk about! Come sit beside me and  _fill me in_!”

“Whose hearts you been hoggin’ lately? Heard you were down south for a while. Been sampling some sweet southern _maaagnolia_?” The third man, his lush blonde ponytail (his hair had been shorter back then) and his soft blonde beard making him look much younger than his 32 years– 34 now– drew out the last word in a honeyed drawl that had once made Mako’s heart stutter and his dick harden.

Dave, Keaton, and Aaron pulled him toward the bar. Jamie followed, still too surprised to offer much resistance. Soon, he was in the center of a controlled frenzy of questions, exclamations, and animal-quick hands on his arse. He kept one hand tight around Jamie’s, handed the beer in his other hand off, and held it up for silence.

“Hey, cool your jets, boys. I’m glad to see you all too, but we can’t stay long. My partner and I are en route to Ottawa and we have to be there by Tuesday.”

“ _This_ Tuesday? Mako, you know we love you, but not even ol’ Greased Lightning could make that kinda time.” Aaron glanced over at Gene, a deceptively portly young man who’d put on even more weight since Mako had seen him last, and had gotten a haircut that made his head look like a mushroom. Gene winked and tongued the straw in his Jack-and-Coke.

“ _I_ can, mate.” Jamie’s grin was wide and his eyes were sharp. Aaron blinked at Jamie, as if seeing him for the first time, despite the four inches of height Jamie had over him.

Mako pulled down his bandana and hiked his aviators back and let the boys remember the man that had once known every hauler on every route and every stop between Austin and Detroit; let them remember who it was that had helped them build this place; who had taken the biggest hit to reputation and livelihood to keep this place and others like it safe. He let them remember exactly who he was, and how much they _owed_ him.  "Aaron, Dave, Keaton, guys, this is my partner, Jamie Fawkes. Better stated, I’m Jamie’s partner. Jamie’s owner and operator of his own rig. I’m mostly there to look pretty.“

"An’ keep the boba flowin’.” Jamie winked up at him.

Mako placed both hands on Jamie’s scrawny shoulders, sending another message that not even Aaron could ignore: _what’s mine is mine_. “And he _is_ going to get us to Ottawa by Tuesday.”

When Jamie reached up with his steel hand gripped two of Mako’s fingers, he punctuated Mako’s unspoken edict with one of his own: _this big lug belongs to me_.

Mako smiled; a flicker of lightning on his thundercloud face.

Understanding dawned on the boys, and Mako was grateful to see most of them hide their disappointment behind fake smiles or beer glasses. But Aaron glanced between Jamie and Mako and cocked an uneasy smile at Jamie. It looked petulantly childish on his unlined, peachfuzzed face and Mako marveled that he’d taken the man as a partner for an entire year and as a lover for another half a year after that.

Mako looked at Jamie. No, it wasn’t so much of a marvel. Heaven help him, he had a _type_.

“Y'all must be haulin’ a nice big load of duck farts, then, if y'think y'all can make it almost fifteen-hundred miles in three days without breakin’ the eleven-hour rule.” Aaron’s words jested; his eyes did not.

“Duck farts it ain’t, mate. Cross me heart.” He drew an X over the breastpocket of his shirt, which glared even in the soft yellow light of the bar.  He had found a six-pack of eyesearingly reflective t-shirts, meant for construction workers, and had sewn or drawn patterns into all of them. His "work uniform”. Today he wore the orange one, decorated by yellow smilies with exes for eyes. “And we don’t break no laws, a'course. I’ll send ya a screenie of our next weigh-in an’ Mako’ll call ya when we hit Ottawa.“

Aaron eyed Jamie for a moment too long, then turned a full-bright grin on Mako. "Eh, who cares, right? I’m goin’ east anyway. Got a steady gig at DHL. I like it. Full benefits. _Wally_!” Aaron turned to the saturnine man behind the bar. “A round a’ Baconators for the boys!”

Jamie clapped gleefully. “Baconators! Hahahahaha! Dare I ask what a lovely concoction of  gut-blisterin’ grog is in a Baconator?”

A young man in a skintight v-neck shirt leaned over to Jamie. “Bacon-flavored vodka, maple liqueur, and cream. If you make it right, which Wally _always_ does, the maple liqueur and cream kinda make little stripeys in the glass. Like sizzlin’ hot _bacon_.” Trey dragged his eyes down Mako’s front and back up.

Eyes and mouth wide and round as his rig’s tires, Jamie spun on Mako. “They make _bacon-flavored vodka_?!”

Mako sighed.

"Oh _hell_ yeah, hon,” Trey chirped. “But Wally has to special-order it from the company. Costs a fortune. He complains about it constantly, but it’s all bullshit, y'know? This place wouldn’t be Hog-Wild without it.” Trey’s plush lips slid up and exposed his gleaming teeth. The last time Mako had seen that grin, it had been hovering over the head of his raging hard cock. “Or _you_ , big boy.” Trey raised his cocktail glass at Mako. “Glad you’re back.”

Aaron returned from the bar with a table-sized serving tray of double-shot glasses balanced expertly on one splayed hand. “Come n’ get your _bacon_ , boys!”

Mako and Jamie were swarmed by men again, but this time they grabbed at the shot glasses instead of Mako’s arse. Mako didn’t take one. Neither did Jamie.

“Aww, c'mon, you guys. Mako! These are in your honor!” Aaron’s smile was a little too wide; his voice a little too loud.

“Ah, no thanks, mate, I’m drivin’,” Jamie said.

“What? It’s Saturday! I thought y'all weren’t breakin’ any rules.”

“We aren’t, mate. Wednesdays n’ Thursdays are our off days.”

Aaron sagged, visibly disappointed. Mako’s brows drew together.

“Mako!” One of the men called. “Go Whole Hog!”

The bar erupted into wild cheers.

 _Oh no_. “No. No; we haven’t got time, guys. We gotta get back on the road. Jamie, let’s g–” Mako urged Jamie toward the door with a big hand on the small of his back, but Jamie balked.

“What’s Whole Hog, mate?” Jamie’s eyes twinkled.

“I’ll tell you in the rig,” he said.

Aaron threw a chummy arm over Jamie’s shoulders and gestured grandly at Mako. “Whole Hog is when the patron saint of this bar, the majestic tower of a man you see before you, consumes one Baconator for every inch of length– _plus girth_ – on that delicious dick of his.”

Aaron grinned like the devil. Jamie blinked owlishly.

“That’s a lotta Baconators, mate,” he said.

“Whole Hog! Whole Hog! Whole Hog! Whole Hog!” Aaron chanted, and soon the whole bar took up the call. The roar drowned out the jolly _beeeng-bong_ of the door as the elderly couple on the restaurant side shuffled hurriedly out.

Aaron lifted the tray from its place on a round-topped table near them. Mako looked at Jamie. He wasn’t chanting, but his eyes were bright and curious in his puppy-cocked head. He wondered how much of this place, if anything, Jamie’d caught onto. If Aaron’s last comment hadn’t roused any suspicion, nothing short of a flat-out grope would.

Mako fixed Aaron with a cast-iron glare. “I do this, and then we leave.”

Aaron shrugged the shoulder that didn’t support the tray. “If you must.“

Mako heaved a sigh, his barrel chest swelling and settling tidally. He plucked a brimming-full glass from the tray between his thumb and pointer finger and held it out. Aaron followed suit.

"To Roadhog, king of the road and hog of our hearts!” Aaron proclaimed.

“ _To Roadhog_!” The rest of the boys bellowed, and three dozen heads tipped back at once.

The shot itself was delicious: first maple-sweet then smoke-salty. It slid creamily down the gullet and left a smooth warm coat in the stomach. Mako had enjoyed it in the past, and he enjoyed the first four now, which he pounded back with a rhythmic dip and swoop of his head.  After six, the boys picked up the count. Mako did not look at Jamie.

“Seven! Eight! Nine!”

Aaron’s voice was loudest.

“ _Ten! Eleven! Twelve_!”

Mako paused, the center of a great and breathless silence, eyes anchored to the reddish-brown soup in the last glass, threaded with while that reminded him, suddenly and obscenely, of come. He gritted his teeth and tossed the last shot directly into the back of his throat.

Jubilant shouts from every man in the bar but Wally and Mako rattled the rafters.

One Baconator was delicious and smooth. Thirteen sloshed heavy in his gut. He finally glanced at Jamie, who gazed at him with a wide-eyed mix of awe and disbelief. Heat rushed up his neck to his cheeks.

Aaron’s clear, ringing laughter reached him. “And even that’s not enough to _slow him down_ , right, boys?” Aaron took a firm and _familiar_ handful of Mako’s crotch, and Mako and Jamie jumped together, as if a current had zapped them both.

A bare second before Jamie launched himself at Aaron, Mako armed him out of Jamie’s reach and marched him into the short hallway that led to the bathroom.

“Mmm, I love it when y'manhandle me,” Aaron purred as Mako jammed him against the wall.

“Back it down, _rookie_. You’re out of line,” Mako growled, the twenty-six shots of alcohol sitting like a liquid boulder in his gut.

“I’m not a rookie no more. I can _ride_ with the best of ‘em now. Thanks t'you.” Aaron said.

Mako shook his head, utterly uncharmed by Aaron’s kaleidoscope eyes, the feathery strands of blonde hair framing his well-shaped face, and the grin that dimpled his stubbled cheeks. Uncharmed by every charm by which Aaron had hooked him four years ago. “ _No_ , Aaron. You’re still a fuckin’ rookie because you’ve still got your head up your arse. The other guys get it. I’m with Jamie now. We’re partners. Partners and _partners_. You’re the only one that doesn’t want to face reality.”

So quick it almost made Mako pity him, Aaron’s grinning facade fell apart. For the first time, he looked his age. “I _waited_ for you.”

Mako’s heart fell. “Jesus, Aaron. Why?”

Scorn and hurt blazed from every line of the young man’s face. “Why th'fuck do y’ think, y'knucklehead?”

Mako shut his eyes and hung his head, upon which the Baconators were already working. “I told you from the very beginning, didn’t I? I told you that whatever we had wasn’t going to be for good, and that I’d leave. And that you’d think I was an arsehole. Because I am. I _told_ you, Aaron.”

“An’ I guess I am just a fuckin’ _rookie_ , 'cuz I didn’t listen.” Aaron pawed tears from his eyes.  "I jes’ thought I was…differ'nt.“

"No. You weren’t.”

“An’ what 'bout Jamie? Is he–?”

“Different.”

Aaron wheezed weakly, dipped his head, sniffed, raised it again. Fresh tears brimmed in his starburst eyes, and the impulse to wipe the tears off with a gentle knuckle blipped across Mako’s brain.

 _Goddamn old romantic_ , he scolded himself. Like they did, the shots worked him over to drunk with the grinding speed of a tsunami. He needed to take Jamie and get gone _soon_.

“I guess I’m happy fer ya, Mako.” Aaron’s voice shook.

“Move on, Aaron.”

He looked tiny and childish and lost. But he met Mako’s eyes and nodded. “Yeah. Guess I will. Gonna miss that mug o’ yours, though. Not one nowhere else like it.”

Without sentiment, Mako turned from him and nosed through the crowd to Jamie. He clung to Mako, and the sweet familiarity of it was as relieving as homecoming. Jamie glared past Mako to the hallway. “Did ya straighten out that grab-arsin’ drongo, mate?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

“Right-o.”

Mako smiled and raised his hand to the boys, and to Wally, who nodded once. Most of the boys raised their glasses and gave their godspeeds graciously; only a few looked at Mako like puppies in the rain. If any of them were jealous of Jamie, they didn’t show it. Aaron did not appear.

Jamie steered the lumbering rig back onto the highway. Mako sagged against the passenger seat and groaned half in relief, half in dismay at the thought of enduring at least eight hours on the road knackered on twenty-six shots of bacon-flavored alcohol inspired by and named after his fucking _dick_.

Despite himself, he chuckled.

“So, Roadie… eh, when you said you knew all the blokes there, I guess you meant y'knew 'em…. _biblically_.”

Mako’s smile fell. The Ta Moko on his cheeks rippled as his jaw muscles worked. The alcohol made thinking as easy as trudging through tar. “Not…not all of them. It’s been a few years.”

Jamie looked at him, his face twitching through emotions.

“Eyes on, Jamie.”

Jamie turned back to the road. Even though Mako’s eyes drifted in and out of focus, he watched Jamie carefully. To Mako’s relief, Jamie’s face decided to be amused. He giggled. “So they really _did_ name that place after ya.” He leaned on the wheel.

Mako nodded, pawed idly at an itch on his neck. His brain was slop and his mouth tasted like smoke and sugar. “I helped get it going. Helped all those guys make a safe space for themselves,” he slurred.

Jamie laughed again, mostly to himself. “Any other truckstop harems I don’t know about, mate?”

Mako’s whorled cheeks burned. “No, that was the only one.”

“Then there’s only two more things I want from ya, ol’ Hog.”

“Anything,” he said with the forceful conviction of the drunk.

Jamie held up one chrome-jointed finger. “First, you sleep off that delicious-smellin’ drunk.”

Mako nodded gratefully.

Jamie held up another finger. “Then, we pull over, you spring fer a hotel room with a nice big bed–pillow mints required; non-negotiable– an’ you go _whole hog_ on me till neither of us can feel our legs. A'right, Hog-a-me-heart?”

“All right.”

“Oh, one more thing.” Jamie flicked the seatbelt’s buckle, hooked a knee over the wheel to steady it, and leaned across the seat. Mako leaned in for a kiss, but his lips brushed the warm steel of Jamie’s arm. He snagged the sunglasses off Mako's head and plunked the FOXY GRANDPA hat in their place. “There. Now y’can kiss me.”

He let Jamie tug him into a kiss by his collar, unable to protest for the tongue in his mouth and the heavy drunk in his head.

“Mmm,” Jamie murmured, smacking his lips and buckling himself back in. “Gotta make me a Baconator sometime.”

Mako smiled and pulled the hat down over his eyes.


End file.
